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It's at best a myth and a worst a lie to say that the public option would ration care

For serious health care reform to gain passage, every advocate and supporter must remain vigilant against the rising tide of misinformation and mischaracterization coming from opponents. It's at best a myth and a worst a lie to say that the public option would ration care -- or ration it any more than exists in the current system where non-insured Americans have had their care rationed to no care at all and premium-insured Americans have more care and options than they could ever possibly use. Every health care plan from HMOs to private insurers ration care. One pays for the plan one wants, can afford, or that is offered through one's employer. One never gets total, endless care without a bloated cost for it -- whether it's out of pocket expense for care or increased rates for insurance, and both applied to everyone including the healthy.

One of the more macabre lines of argument against health care reform these days is about the "Case of Senator Kennedy," long admired as an advocate of universal health care. Using his incurable brain cancer against his forty-year public advocacy is in poor taste at the very least and all but bridges on the obscene when you hear from health reform opponents that Sen. Kennedy would never get the cancer treatment he's getting if he were on the public option.

The argument is hardly convincing besides. Sen. Kennedy, like many Americans who currently have health care insurance and like the plan they have, wouldn't need to join the public option. He has private insurance through his job as a United States government employee -- plus, given his wealth, he can and likely has bought supplementary insurance. In addition, the public option is not, as it were, a permanent condition for any one; Americans would be able to join the public option or leave for it for a private option, and return again, depending on a host of factors including price, personal wealth, and employment. But if we're not going to create a single-payer system, the least we can do is devise a system where some Americans can purchase all the health insurance and care they want and others can have a public option to buy an affordable minimum range of insurance and care. The non-universal health-rationing system we have now rations away care entirely for 40 million Americans. Universalization is essential from both a cost and public health standpoint. The status quo has died on the operating table.

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